by Rich Handley
Lining up the chimpanzee, Urko gasped. Now, he recognized the ape. The contours of his face, the length of his hair, the build of his limber body. Even his piercing eyes.
Especially the eyes.
Yes, Urko had seen this chimpanzee’s visage before, adorning countless statues and priceless classical paintings throughout the city. He had even been to the ape’s tomb several times.
“By the Lawgiver,” Urko whispered to no one. “It’s the Unknown Ape!”
He had heard hushed rumors of the sightings, but had dismissed them as ghost stories. Nonsense, he’d thought. Or was it? It was as the Simian Book of Prophecy had foretold. The greatest ape of them all had returned.
The Unknown Ape. And he is my enemy!
Urko got busy making fermented ruta juice out of sour rutaberries. The appearance of this mysterious chimpanzee leader would not hinder him, no. Instead, all of apekind would see what a virulent warrior he was.
I will go down in history as the gorilla who bested the Unknown Ape!
If the chimpanzee was merely a charlatan, no one need know the truth. One way or another, that chimp’s death would usher in glory for Urko.
Statues and paintings of me, he fantasized, adorning all of Ape City!
With renewed vigor, the gorilla general steadied his rifle once more. Ape shall never kill ape, he reflected. But the Unknown Ape died almost twenty centuries ago. You can’t kill what is already dead!
As he focused on the kill, his nostrils were filled with something other than dust and stale steam. Pungent. Bitter. Familiar.
Ignoring it, he shook his head and lined up the Unknown Ape in his sights. As the smell grew in intensity, his intuition caught up with him.
Wait, Urko’s eyes opened wide. Where is the loin-clothed human?
The butt of the rifle smashed his face. Urko’s head slammed into the altar, chipping the pitted stone.
The bearded humanoid stood over him, bare-chested and barbaric. Worse than that, it spoke: “This is for Bill, you sadist.” The humanoid kicked him hard, its bare foot striking the general across the temple.
As his vision blurred, Urko lamented. Should have trusted my nose…
The void took him.
* * *
Ron Brent had taken out Urko.
An astronaut from the year 2109, Colonel Ronald Roland Brent was a descendant of astronaut John Brent. Colonel Brent’s ship had crashed in the Forbidden Zone two decades before the Venturer and her crew—Bill Hudson, Judy Franklin, and Jeff Allen—had arrived. It wasn’t until the three had found him living as a hermit that he’d realized he was in Earth’s future, and that apes had taken over the planet. Part of a human community again, Ron had adopted a father-figure role to a female primitive humanoid, naming her Nova. He had become good friends with Bill—the human whom the apes used to call “Blue Eyes.” When Bill had been lost in their fight against Urko, Ron swore vengeance for his friend. Standing over the broken and bloodied gorilla general, Brent finally felt a modicum of satisfaction.
Nearby, Jeff had wounded Zako. Like a house of cards, the rest of the gorilla force capitulated.
Scanning the crowd, the Unknown Ape was relieved to see Cornelius and Virgil safe in the care of Bruce MacDonald. The battle won, the Unknown Ape’s self-styled Unknown Army cheered.
Their celebration was a bit premature.
At the cathedral’s heart, the weapon still stood tall, still vented noxious gases, and was still primed for launch. As the last gorillas were rounded up, the Unknown Ape prodded his human allies. “Ah, we still have a crisis, here. Where exactly are the Underdwellers?”
His astronaut friend Alan stole a look out the charred doorway. Frowning, he shook his head. Jeff touched his temple, then spoke up: “Judy and Krador are on their way! Krador is sending a deactivation code to us through thought transmission now. It should shut the missile down.”
A series of large red numbers flashed through the minds of everyone present. Possessing telepathic powers, the Underdweller leader Krador had forced the sequence into their minds. Shaking off the thought transmission, the Unknown Ape called for his science advisors.
“Gentle-apes, I, ah, suggest we do something about this weapon,” he motioned to the ominous device, “before it does something about us. Agreed?”
The orangutans Virgil and Doctor Zaius rushed to the console, followed closely by the chimpanzee Cornelius.
As the Unknown Ape watched Cornelius make his way through the rubble, MacDonald circumnavigated the missile itself—stopping when he saw the letters on its starboard wing.
Doctor Zaius punched in the weapon’s deactivation sequence. The numbers had no effect. “The console may have suffered corrosion damage over time,” he offered.
“If we cannot deactivate it by code,” Virgil postulated, “we may have to open the warhead and manually remove its core.”
Everyone looked up at the venting projectile.
It was a bold and dangerous suggestion. If not handled with the utmost precision, the bomb would activate. At the least, it would flood everyone in the cathedral with a large enough dose of radiation to kill them within a few short weeks. At the most, it could detonate right in front of them.
Joining the orangutans, Cornelius produced a knife-edged pry bar from his tool bag. “Before we go that far,” the chimpanzee archeologist suggested, “perhaps we should be sure that all the contacts are making the appropriate connections.” Wedging the bar between a metal and plastic seam, Cornelius popped the console’s cover off, exposing the circuit boards within.
Brent slung his automatic rifle and went to help the apes make sense of the circuit boards.
Perched above, the Unknown Ape watched Cornelius work with Zaius and Virgil. Distracted by the scientists’ attempts to disarm the atom bomb, neither the Unknown Ape nor Brent noticed that Urko had come to.
An obscene cry resounded off the cathedral’s walls.
A rabid Urko threw himself at Brent, pummeling him to the floor. Brent struggled to fend off the insane ape, but the gorilla’s strength was too great. The savage clamped his jaws down—hard. Steely fangs sank deep into the astronaut’s shoulder and neck, slicing through his carotid artery.
As Brent lost consciousness and sprayed blood across the steps, Alan leapt into the fray. Tackling the gorilla, he pried the ape’s mouth off the mortally wounded astronaut before hammering Urko’s face. Enraged all the more, the gorilla tore Alan off of him, sending the man crashing down the altar’s steps. Full of bloodlust and determined to launch that missile, Urko stampeded the control console. Virgil unslung his automatic rifle, but the chamber was jammed. Cornelius shoved him and Zaius out of the way and steadied himself for Urko’s attack.
It never came.
The Unknown Ape fired. A single shot echoed through the hall, lancing the raging gorilla’s neck and exiting through his throat. Urko stumbled but kept moving. His final cry was a wet sticky gurgle as the gorilla’s momentum propelled his bulk past the cowering Cornelius. Urko tumbled up and over the split altar and onto the control console, flicking open the launcher’s safety switch in the process. With a death rattle, the general slumped over the console, his hand connecting with the firing mechanism. Before anyone could stop it, the launch cylinder glowed red and sank into the control panel.
The missile began its final countdown.
Ancient turbines let loose a high-pitched whine. Silo doors in the cathedral’s ceiling cycled open. Sand and debris from millennia of disuse rained down on the missile, pelting it with rocks and showering those closest to it with a fine white ash. The weapon continued to vent toxic gas. As the ash hit the jets of steam, it was sprayed around the hall.
A rumble grew outward from the weapon’s heart until the entire cathedral reverberated with its awesome power. Alan and MacDonald grabbed Virgil, Zaius, and Cornelius, shielding them behind the altar just in time. The missile’s rockets ignited, incinerating Urko’s corpse and obliterating the rear of the cathedral.
/> With a mighty blast of its engines, the weapon lifted and began its spiraling climb to the surface world.
All was lost.
The cathedral shuddered.
* * *
Ronald Brent was dead, and they would all soon be as well.
The Unknown Ape followed the atomic rocket’s glare. It shot up the missile silo, twisting as it soared toward the night sky.
Was it supposed to spin like that? he wondered.
It didn’t matter. His mission, it seemed, was a failure. While Judy, Alan, Brent, and their missing friend Bill had come to this future via accident, the Unknown Ape and his companions—the orangutan Virgil and the humans Alan and MacDonald—had traveled forward in time to prevent a permanent destruction wrought by both man and ape. To hear Virgil tell it, an omen from the future had compelled them to prevent disaster.
That was not an easy thing to explain.
Evolved apes from the fortieth century, Cornelius and Zira, had been thrust back in time by the destruction of the Earth itself. He was their son—the child of a union in the future, born in the past—and he had led apekind out of captivity. For better or for worse, the Unknown Ape was Caesar… and right now, things couldn’t be any worse.
Upon their arrival in the late twentieth century, Caesar’s parents had been “interviewed” by the U.S. government. Classified tapes of those sessions had been sealed deep within the archives section of the Forbidden City. Decades later, Caesar and his confidants—Virgil and MacDonald—explored the ruins of the bombed-out metropolis. There, they had seen those tapes.
The trio then set about stopping the future destruction of the planet, be it by human or ape hands. They unearthed the last of ANSA’s Liberty-class spacecraft: a starship designated Probe Nine. Together with their new friend Alan—an astronaut who himself was out of his own time—they headed to the future. Calling themselves the Travellers, they hoped to change the course of history, to set man and ape on the right path.
Traveling to further eras, Caesar learned of the simian council’s edict to posthumously deny his existence. He had been expunged from all records, and what few texts mentioning him remained were considered apocryphal to the Sacred Scrolls.
Caesar found that they could erase the ape, but not the legend. His nameless accomplishments had become attributed to “the Unknown Ape.” Caesar adopted the moniker, and the Travellers used the influence of his myth to guide humans and apes away from the precipice. To steer them clear of genocide. To save them from themselves.
Despite their efforts, each future the Travellers accelerated toward only seemed worse. Much, much worse.
Just like now.
“Caesar!” The Unknown Ape’s reverie broke.
When Zaius, Cornelius, and the ape troops looked perplexed, Virgil tried again. “Ah, Unknown Ape!”
Zaius whispered to Cornelius. “Caesar?” Cornelius shrugged.
Caesar looked away from the rapidly receding trail blazing above. On the steps, Alan was respectfully covering Brent’s body with the torn robe of an Underdweller. By the altar, Virgil and Zaius furiously input commands into the weapon’s control console. Their efforts were rewarded with a flashing yellow beacon.
“We cannot disarm the missile nor stop it from here,” said Zaius. “We were, however, able to alter its trajectory. The weapon should now circumnavigate the planet once before it comes down on its target.”
Jeff voiced his own concerns. “What is its target, Virgil?”
“Yes, well, as Urko had not completed the coordinate sequence before we arrived, the target is not Hidden Valley.”
Jeff let go a sigh of relief. Virgil continued. “Instead, it appears ground zero is Ape City.”
Zaius and Cornelius looked grim.
“It doesn’t matter, Virgil,” MacDonald interjected. “Did you see the symbols on the missile’s wing? Alpha and omega.”
Caesar, Virgil, MacDonald, and Alan all knew what that meant—they had been made privy to the twentieth-century man’s Alpha-Omega Bomb in one fashion or another.
The others were nonplussed. MacDonald did his best to explain.
“It will burn the planet to a cinder. It—” MacDonald paused, unable to finish his thought.
Caesar completed it for him. “That thing is a doomsday bomb.” He pointed to the exposed sky at the far end of the silo tube. “No matter where it detonates,” he cast his eyes down, “it will kill us all.”
Human and ape alike hung their heads low. The cathedral grew silent in prayer.
Caesar weaved through the crowd, breaking the spell. “Lucius,” the Unknown Ape addressed his sergeant in hushed tones. “Take the apes back to the surface as fast as you can. Tell them to see their loved ones. There is little time.”
Lucius nodded. The sergeant gathered the Unknown Army and led them home. As each devotee passed the Unknown Ape, they reached out to touch their leader, chimpanzee, gorilla, and orangutan alike. Unity among apekind.
But Caesar—as himself or as the Unknown Ape—had no speeches for them, no words of encouragement. He was defeated.
Caesar and his Travellers were further along in the timeline than the dates his parents had proclaimed as the end of the world—and his parents, Cornelius and Zira, were here, not thrust back in time. At first glance, it would seem that history had been changed, that they had achieved limited success after all.
Except, here it was again: the Alpha-Omega Bomb. The end of the world.
Just like Caesar had seen in his visions long ago. The same, but different. A warmongering gorilla general. A race of underground mutants. An ancient cathedral deep beneath the planet of the apes. An astronaut named Brent, dead. But why hadn’t the humanoid female Nova been here to die when the gorillas invaded? She was safe back at Hidden Valley with Zira. And where was the astronaut whom his parents had come to love?
Where was Taylor?
The setting was the same. Many of the players were the same. But the particulars were off. So many things were off, but the endgame would be the same.
Or would it?
As the last of the ape army receded from the cathedral, Alan snapped to life.
“Wait just a minute!” Index finger raised, the excited astronaut approached the orangutan scientists. “You’re sure that missile is going to make a full orbit?”
Zaius looked over the disheveled control panel again. Conferring quietly with Virgil, the elder orangutan ultimately nodded.
Virgil turned to face Alan. “That is our assertion, yes.”
“That’s almost ninety minutes, plus seven or eight minutes’ ascent time.” Focused, Alan strode toward the wrecked doorway.
“We’ve only lost maybe fifteen minutes…” The astronaut was onto something. “I swear to you,” Alan asserted, “we are not out of this yet.”
Recognizing the inflection of Alan’s voice, Caesar did not question his human friend. Instead, he fell in beside him. The others soon followed.
“Jeff,” Alan continued, “tell Judy and Krador to meet us at the hangar.”
Caesar had an idea of what Alan had in mind, and it was he who gave the next command: “Have Probe Nine prepped for launch.”
* * *
“Alan—it’s suicide!” Judy exclaimed.
“You tell me another way—any other way—and I’m ready to listen.”
Judy and a group of Underdwellers had met them on the way to the hangar. As he spoke, Alan moved with purpose. It had taken them nearly another ten minutes to get there from the cathedral.
“All I know is we’ve got maybe an hour left before that missile starts its descent.” Alan sped his way down the corridor, Caesar at his side. Alan spoke over his shoulder at the group behind them. “And if it is the Alpha-Omega Bomb, it could ignite the entire atmosphere.”
Caesar recalled what his mother’s tapes had said about the Earth’s destruction: “When we were in space, we saw a bright, white, blinding light. Then we saw the rim of the Earth melt. Then there was a tornado in th
e sky!”
The group entered the vast cavern via a catwalk, high above the cave’s floor. The burrow was filled with the blink and hum of technology two millennia ahead of twentieth-century Earth. The focus of this room, not unlike the cathedral which had held the Alpha-Omega Bomb, was a launch silo. This launch pad here did not support a weapon of mass destruction. Instead, it housed Probe Nine.
The spacecraft was why the Travellers had been here during Urko’s attack. She was now also their only chance of salvation.
The Travellers’ ship had been damaged upon arrival in this century. They had forged an alliance with the Venturer’s exiled crew. Judy Franklin had called for help from the technologically advanced Underdwellers, and they had secreted Probe Nine here for repair. After nearly a year, she was ready for launch—ready to take Caesar, Virgil, and the rest back to the early twenty-first century.
Except Alan now had a more desperate gambit in mind.
“I’ll go alone. Intercept the missile at its orbital apogee.” He smashed his fist into his palm. “Get it to detonate above the atmosphere. The only thing you should suffer down here would be an electromagnetic pulse that will fry every unshielded circuit on the planet.” While the Underdwellers’ machines were likely protected, the technology of the apes was not.
At that, Cornelius gasped.
“But then we will lose our machines, our power—ape civilization as we know it.”
“Yes,” Alan agreed. “The playing field would be leveled. You’ll be the same as the ape colonies out there that never had power. But…” He paused for effect. “You will be alive to rebuild.”
Cornelius nodded, realizing that the human was right. The others looked incredulous. Caesar turned to his scientific advisor. “Virgil?”
After a moment of mental calculation, Virgil turned to Caesar and sighed heavily. “What Alan is suggesting has a substantial probability of success, pending the expediency with which we implement his outline.”
Caesar stared daggers at Virgil, and the orangutan relented. “In a word, yes.”
Alan pulled Caesar away from Cornelius and Zaius to speak privately. “We’re cutting it close, Caesar. Fifteen minutes to program an intercept course. Another half an hour to complete launch prep. Seven more to reach orbit, and then ten, maybe fifteen minutes to find the damn thing and hit it before it falls back to Earth.”
